Scar Tissue
by Nallain
Summary: There's this one scar that shall never be healed completely, Adelle knows.


Adelle DeWitt doesn`t particularly enjoy security breaches. For one, she likes to think about things before she does them. She doesn`t like barking out orders and she never runs, if she doesn`t have to. Safe and sound, calm and serene, those are her kinds of situations. Panic, pain, sudden rushes of emotions... those are pathetic and distracting.

And this time, it all goes to hell and Adelle runs as fast as her tight skirt and Prada heels allow her to. She storms out of her office, looking back but not really caring if Boyd Langton follows her. The Actives below her rise their heads to her curiously and she catches a glimpse of Echo, Victor, Sierra... She doesn`t care right now. She mustn`t care.

Topher literally jumps back as she runs into the lab and before he`s able to say anything, she barks out: "Topher, complete lockdown! Now!" and she`s gone again.

_(She remembers the Alpha incident - the fear that accompanied the word "lockdown" these days. The screams, the blood and also, oddly enough, the way Mr Dominic practically ordered her to stay in her office, the way he locked both the entrances and the way she snapped at him angrily for all that unnecessary precautions thirty minutes later - but she also remembers the immense wave of horror when she heard the door unlocking and the relief when he came in...)_

It is only in the elevator that she calms down, taking deep breaths and, weirdly enough, rearranging her hair. The minute it takes the elevator to get her to the highest floor is excruciating. And as the door slides open, Adelle doesn`t run anymore. She walks slowly to the door at the end of the corridor, hesitates, then puts the security code in. Then there`s the Attic and the truly ice-cold air strikes her as it always does. It freezes her burning cheeks and momentarily, Adelle is terrified. She walks by the cells, one by one, concrete and glass cubes in which the prisoners - motionless bodies pale as snow with eyes wide open - lay in absolute silence, interrupted only by an occasional beep of the machines.

_(Once she had this place be made as terrrifying as it possibly could be - Topher proved himself to be a disturbingly creative mind then, with corners in his genius brain so dark she didn`t ever dare try to peek around. He created the Attic in less than two months, and she never asked how - it was there, she knew what it could do, it scared people off efficiently, and that was all Adelle would allow herself to know._

_"Wow," he says the first time she brings him up here, "impressive. This is going to be a very good leverage, Ms DeWitt."_

_"Yes," she replies simply, and shows him the rest. Since then, he always accompanies her when she proceeds with her regular controls in here.) _

She walks and walks and she doesn`t look left or right and it is at the end of the corridor that her steps die out.

Lawrence Dominic is there, wearing a simple grey pyjamas (not unlike the Actives do), dark bags under his eyes, smaller, weaker and very, very exhausted, but his hand holding a gun doesn`t as much as waver. He stands barefoot, surrounded by remains of what once was his translucent, cold glass coffin, and the little shards, bright as diamonds, remind Adelle of a human mind, or a relationship, perhaps - seemingly solid and yet quite easy to shatter with a bare fist (if not entirely painless).

(_And you can pick up all the pieces, but even if you spend the longest of times gluing the all back together, it`s never going to be the same.)_

Adelle does realize she`s not thinking clearly enough. She should be enraged. She should be frightened. She should be at least annoyed. Instead, face to face with her... past, Adelle feels dull.

Guilt, fury, pain, love... everything fades away and she is relieved, for some reason, tired and cold.

"Well then, Mr Dominic," she says, her voice dry and stark, yet demanding, "come on. Kill me already. Bring down the Dollhouse."

He stares at her, his gaze glacial and unflinching, and once again he makes her ask herself questions that are too frightening to phrase out loud.

_(She finds it disturbingly easy to sound collected, cold and resolute. She hides her emotions as if they were nothing but useless reminders of her humanity._

_When she orders Topher to "meddle" with Dominic`s pain receptors before his body goes to the Attic, so that particular parts of his mind remain idle, she knows why she`s doing it. She can`t have his brain fried, turned to scrambled eggs, not just yet. She feels they might very well need him sometime in the future and she needs to protect whatever information he has._

_It becomes the whole truth to her over time.)_

"I never wanted to bring you down," he says simply, his voice hoarse and very, very indifferent.

He repeats himself, Adelle knows, but then she remembers the sleepless nights, the theories, the walks up to the Attic every other evening, and the tears, and so she remains silent.

Then he makes a few steps towards her, feet patting, she steps back, heels clicking. Pathetic.

"And I never wanted to kill you."

Staring down the loaded gun, she thinks she could laugh at him, but then again, even though his shoulders shake occasionally from the ever-present cold, he manages to look positively menacing.

"You shot me, remember?" she says instead, and it doesn`t sound properly sarcastic, or as witty as she`d perhaps like.

And Dominic laughs - not a merry sound - and comes a few steps nearer, and this time she despises herself for stepping back.

"Well, that certainly wasn`t meant to kill you."

She put him in the Attic. She never even tried to listen to anything he might have wanted to say. That time, she just wanted to be rid of him, make an _example _out of him, and when it was done, a dull spot in her mind appeared, something she was never quite able to put a finger on. Not to mention the fact that the line of problems kept growing exponentionally - she never thought it was because he wasn`t there, but sometimes, just sometimes all the factors showed otherwise.

_(Like the problem with Senator Perrin. The name on his list was Dominic`s name, disturbingly enough. And then there were other individuals. Whole companies. With all those people used to getting information from inside the Dollhouse on a regular basis, Adelle marvelled the fact they didn`t go rolling straight down much, much sooner. It was then she started wondering exactly what kind of information Mr Dominic had been giving away. Soon it became clear that it had not been anything particularly crucial, but more importantly, nothing completely true...)_

"_Why _did you shoot me, then?"

And as Mr Dominic steps out of the shadows, as they enter the corridor and as they hear a few sets of rushing footsteps approaching, his eyes shine a vicious light blue.

"To leave a scar," he says.

_(He succeeded. He succeeded a long time before the... incident, but the gunshot somehow made it real. Adelle remembers how it hurt longer than it should`ve. How the scar never healed as well as expected. There were times she would completely forget about it, yes, and they were more often these days, thank God.)_

"Step back, Ms DeWitt."

"Mr Langton, please don`t be melodramatic and put the gun down. The last thing we want is a dead Mr Dominic. We might very well need him sometime in the future, don`t you forget about that."

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**This is a work of fiction.**

**All rights belong to their respective owners.**

**Story (c) Nallain, 2009**

**(Had I owned Dollhouse, I`d make it at least five, six seasons. Minimum. :))**


End file.
